A Contrastive Analysis Of English Translation Of Lunyu From The Perspective Of Misreading Theory

Lunyu, as a Chinese classic which contains rich contents and profound thoughts, is read widely for thousands of years. Since the twenty-first century, with the increase of China’s comprehensive national power and the successive establishment of Confucius Institute in the globe, Confucianism has become increasingly favored by people from all over the world, and the translation of Lunyu is attracting people’s wide attention as well. In this thesis, the English versions by Ku Hungming and Pound are the main study objects and this paper is intended to do a comparative analysis of the two versions on basis of Misreading Theory put forward by Harold Bloom to probe into how the two translators misread this book and to point out the positive significance of this way of translation.Misreading Theory originated in the 1960 s and was put forward by postmodernists who considered “misreading” as a positive and initiative behavior. In essence,“misreading” is due to the inner requirement of culture development. In the same era,the deconstruction represented by Derrida regarded “misreading” as “interpretation”.He holds that the interpretation of linguistic signs is not ultimate and meaning is in a state of dynamic forever, so his opinion subverts the traditional view that meaning is stable and summative and lays theoretical foundation for misreading. In 1970 s, another deconstructionist Harold Bloom put forward “Poetic Misprision”, arguing that the relation between texts was determined by one poet’s misreading of another. That is to say, in order to break through the predecessors to establish their own statuses, writers interpret the work intentionally. The “misreading” in Bloom’s Misreading Theory does not refer to wrong explanation but means creative adjustment. In the field of translation,misreading refers to the creative interpretation of the origin on basis of the translator’s certain purpose and then this kind of misreading is reflected in the translated text.This thesis does a comparative study on Ku’s and Pound’s versions of Lunyu from linguistic and cultural perspectives to discuss the distinctions and similarities between the two translators’ translations of a certain language phenomenon. The part of linguistic aspect does a comparative analysis mainly from the angle of lexicon, syntaxand figure of speech. The part of cultural aspect does the research mainly in terms of material culture images, social culture images and religious culture images. Through comparative analysis the author finds that the similarities of culture images translation in the two versions are reflected mainly in syntax translation. Both of the translators translate passive sentences in the origin into active sentences, rhetorical question sentences into declarative sentences and add subject in the translated text to the no-subject sentences in Chinese. For part of social culture images and religious culture images translation, the two translators adopt the same translation method-- free translation. For example, as for the social and religious culture images “nan mian”, “ao”and “zao” in Lunyu, both of them give similar interpretations. The differences in the two versions are reflected mainly in the translation of core words, figures of speech and material culture images. On the whole, Ku Hungming adopts domesticating translation strategy and his translated text is closer to target language culture and easy to understand for western readers. Pound adopts foreignizing translation strategy and his translated text reproduces the source language culture as far as possible. Compared with Ku’s version, Pound’s translation is more faithful to the original text.Lunyu concerns not only language transformation but also cultural translation which is more important. Because of the wide difference between China and the western in language and culture, the translation of Lunyu needs artful transformation.Misreading has positive significance on both the original text and cultural blending. Ku Hungming’s and Pound’s misreading of Lunyu is a kind of creative translation of the source language. The “betrayal” of the origin is exactly the uniqueness of the two editions and is also where research value lies. Through the translator’s translation,interpretation space of the origin expands and the origin gains a second life in exotic culture and obtains wide approval of western readers. Chinese traditional culture gets transmitted as well.